Albania to renew cooperation with Frontex

Albania will renew its cooperation with EU border agency Frontex, including the organisation of joint operations and the deployment of guards in the country, following a decision by the European Council to sign an agreement.

The Council noted that the agreement will allow Frontex to assist Albania with managing migratory flows, countering illegal immigration and tackling cross-border crime.

“Cross-border crime and immigration management are important challenges both for EU countries and our closest neighbours,” said Spain’s acting Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska about the agreement.

The first deal between Albania and Frontex was signed in 2019 and renewed again in 2021. This was the first time Frontex deployed guards to a non-EU member state. Albania also passed a law that granted Frontex officers complete criminal immunity on Albanian territory.

But Frontex’s deployment in Albania has been controversial. In 2021, they were accused of illegally deporting refugees and migrants by pushing them back to Greece. Following an investigation by DW, several individuals said Frontex staff apprehended them in Albania and were prevented from applying for asylum and were sent back over the Greek border without proper processes being followed.

A subsequent investigation by Albanian media Exit.al revealed that people smugglers also reported their charges of being apprehended in Albania, interviewed by the police, and then dropped back over the border with Greece.

This is on top of the agency’s ongoing woes, including allegations of pushing people back to Libya, human rights violations on the Greece-Turkey border, preventing people from exercising their right to apply for asylum and covering up multiple wrongdoings.

It was also subject to criticism following the publication of a report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which revealed the misconduct of several employees in Greece in 2020.

In 2022, Human Rights Watch said Frontex contracted a drone from a private company and operated it out of Malta to give information to the Libyan Coastguard on boats trying to cross from Libya to Europe.

“The use by the EU’s border agency, Frontex, of aerial surveillance to enable the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept migrant boats, knowing that migrants and asylum seekers will face systematic and widespread abuse when forcibly returned to Libya, makes Frontex complicit in the abuse,” Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics said when publishing the research.

“As long as Frontex operations are designed to enable interceptions by Libyan forces, the border agency and the EU should be held accountable for their role in the abuses suffered by people returned to Libya,” they added.

The report concludes that Frontex’s approach is designed “not to rescue people in distress but to prevent them from reaching EU territory.”

Once the European Parliament has consented to the agreement, it can be finally concluded by the Council. The agreement enters into force on the first day of the second month after Albania and the EU notified each other of completing their ratification procedures.

(Alice Taylor | EURACTIV.com)